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La vie boheme

We don’t particularly live une vie boheme. We neither starve regularly, nor build fires out of old manuscripts to keep warm, nor choose to wear colorful skirts or scarves that look like tapestries (though the Philosopher has been known to wrap himself in blankets from time to time. Gets the brain juices going.)

We did enjoy a glimpse of Bohemian Paris on Thursday night however. Turns out that a part of the whole lifestyle is breaking out into luscious trills and full-bodied high notes whenever emotion swells.

I could definitely live like that. Someone was belting out Little Mermaid songs this morning and it may or may not have been me.

We kicked off the evening with a re-visit to Byron’s Burgers which offers a friendly 40% discount to students on Thursday nights.

Students in Oxford take all shapes and sizes.

As do the Byron french fries. The Philosopher when for classic thin and crispy. I branched out into courgette fries. We had of course picked the cheap seats for Puccini’s La Boheme, so climbed to the very top of the theatre holding our full bellies – third balcony, last row. Surprisingly, we could see almost everything… Except each other!La boheme is dark as well of course, but this production kept a light touch as it deftly dealt with the themes of young love, poverty, art and death.

Plus it was soaringly sung. Wow.

As we left we saw the giant Welsh National Opera vans loading out the set and loading in the pieces for Friday night’s show – Cosi fan tutte!

The City of Oxford was staging another set that evening…”Holiday” lights – already!There must be a night-time setting, even on a 7 year old digital camera – must do some fiddling.

We were so inspired by Puccini’s score that even the Philosopher was warbling in his falsetto vibrato all the way on the bike ride home!